more signs of the end times

SIGNE THE FIRSTE: There are school buses in Medford with ads on them. Same ol' regulation School Bus Yellow school buses as usual, except these have ads for Comcast painted along the side under the windows. Are schools really in such desperate financial shape?

SIGNE THE SECONDE: A lovely news article from the Baltimore Sun which, due to registration required and whatnot, I'll shamelessly gank and post right here:

( MAN ARRESTED AT BEST BUY FOR PAYING WITH $2 BILLS )

Okay, we now have fifteen seconds to point out the Things We Think Are The Most Wrong With This Article.

I'll start off with a doozy: "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."

First person to relate how 9/11 relates to Best Buy employees unable to comprehend legal tender wins this limited-edition Dale Earnhardt Jr Memorial Coke Can (#75 in a 168-can collector's series.) I mean, it's not as if Zacharias Moussaoui & Co. paid for their plane tickets with two dollar bills. And I'm pretty sure an OMG TERRIST!!1 bent on the destruction of the decadent capitalist American society isn't exactly going to go around buying a blingin' CD player for his son's car. Unless maybe he's planning on sticking an OMG DIRTY BOMB!!!1 into it or something. Sure, maybe an ink smear might've been a problem and counterfeiting is an OMG TERRIST!!1!! red flag, but honestly, shamelessly sticking in 9/11 as an excuse for flipping out, even after the dude's cleared his name, is just sad. We're not "all a little nervous." We're apparently "all a lot stupid."

But then again, we're the biggest, roughest, toughest country around that don't take no shit from no one, and we're all positively obsessed with and scared shitless by our boogymen.